Thoughts from
San Diego on Law, Politics, and Culture

 
Good news on Hubble?
By Tom Smith

This is good news. Apparently a deluge of protest has greeted NASA's announcement that they were going to let Hubble die. Has NASA been responsible for any more important scientific accomplishment than Hubble? I can't think of any. It certainly makes a lot more sense than putting delicate water and carbon based life bags on Mars.
posted by thomas at 1/31/2004 06:06:00 PM

 
Somebody help this woman!
By Tom Smith

The thing I object to most about Maureen Dowd is that she is not funny, at least not lately. Her mind is just not cut out to deal with big complicated issues with fates of many lives, principles and nations at stake. I would be quite happy to read things making fun of Bush and Cheney, if they made me laugh. And look, Bush is not that hard of a target. He is remarkably inarticulate whenever he departs from prepared text, and he does have a tendency, apparently familial, toward goofiness, that could easily be parodied as that of an evil clown. But instead all Dowd can harp on is that fact that he is a guy. She has never gotten over not being her high school quarterback's best girl. Cheney is well known around D.C. as being the kindly uncle who in fact has a steel heart and ice water in his veins. There's plenty to work with there. Instead, Dowd tries to portray him as a ranter, when in fact his speech has the quality of a nerveless surgeon. Of course her politics annoy me, but what offends me is her utter lack of insight. She sounds like the shopping mom who spends all her time telling the same stale jokes to her friends who laugh at them mechanically, because they are working off the same stale script themselves. She needs to get out more, with some different people. That she has such a prominent perch is proof that labor markets are full of rigidities, and markets are imperfect. Maybe Krugman could use her as an example in his next piece about why we need government intervention. She is at least as infuriatingly clunky as Windows.
posted by thomas at 1/30/2004 09:46:00 AM

 
Amateur Hour at the New York Times
By Tom Smith

Here is Paul Krugman on WMD's in Iraq. Here is Krauthammer. Krauthammer is a professional journalist. Krugman is a professional economist, indeed one who has excoriated non-professional economists from daring to comment on economic policy. Why does Krugman think he is qualified to even have opinions about the intersection of intelligence gathering, security policy and international affairs? Yes, he is a talented mathematician. But his views on politics seem no more sophisticated to me than those of the average science major at an Ivy League college. Yet, I am sure most readers of the Times just eat him up. Such a bright boy.
posted by thomas at 1/30/2004 09:34:00 AM

 
The European Problem
By Tom Smith

More essential reading from George Weigel.
posted by thomas at 1/30/2004 09:27:00 AM

 
What's so bad about inequality?
By Tom Smith

An illuminating if not exactly interesting debate is going on over at Brian Leiter's site, due to reactions to his posting of a Cornell philosopher's epistemological (using the term loosely, believe me) argument that commentators on the left and the right should not be treated with equal skepticism. I simplify the philosopher's argument only slightly by saying that his view is that persons of the left should be given more credit because they are less likely to be wicked, and so less likely to be lying than persons, such as myself, who might be considered on the (ever so reasonable) right. First, let me assure my readers that the chances on any important election being decided by this philosopher or indeed all American philosophers voting one way or another is vanishingly small. The chances that our next President will be Lyndon LaRouche are much higher, so you all can just relax. The hideously unequal regime under which we swill champagne, smoke cigars, oppress workers, not to mention discriminate against every single group imaginable is safe for the time being.

In my wickedness, it has occurred to me to wonder just what is so bad about the inequality that exercises the left so that it leads them to such intemperate remarks? I was an undergraduate major in the very Cornell philosophy department from which this current mini-Jerimiad issued, and I have to say, folks seemed to be living pretty comfortably there last I checked. The Sage School of Philosophy is well endowed by a family that no doubt made its fortune in some very capitalistic endeavour, as indeed is much of the rest of at least the Arts and Sciences college at Cornell. Willard Straight Hall, the student union, is named after one of the great railroad entrepreneurs. I must say I am at a bit of a loss as to how exactly the philosophy professor is benefitting any less from 'hideous inequality' than my friend Gary Lawson, who is also a professor at a large private university, which no doubt has its own pots of cash given to it by people who felt driven to make more money than anybody else. There really are people of heroic virtue out there, and Gary Lawson actually comes much closer to this ideal than most people I know, so it just figures some guy whose mastery of oh, say, economics, is probably well captured by his remark that '95 percent of people were made worse off by Reagan's upward redistribution' (my paraphrase), should decide to pick on him. But I have in mind more the people who really do spend their time trying to help the street children of Lima or Bangkok, rather than trying to figure out whether we are really just brains in a vat.

But of course, I have forgotten that saving a few kids here and there is a far, far too modest ambition for those moral heroes on the left. Why do that when you can build the grand intellectual structure that would lead us all to the promised land of equality and plenty, or at least sufficiency, if only the benighted masses would wake up and follow it? It would be too easy to attribute to energetic leftist youngsters the same bad motives they often seem willing to attribute to their ideological foes, not to mention their intellectual betters, at least in fields that hold some promise of actually helping the suffering poor. Anyone who has spent any time in real politics, which includes very few philosophers these days, I would bet, should know there are more than enough evil people to go around. But what baffles me is how earnest left-wingers don't seem even to grasp the plausibility of the widespread belief along the lines of "socialism is a recipie for poverty and misery." I mean, why don't China, the USSR, Vietnam, Cuba, North Korea, all the Eastern bloc countries, and every African and South American basket case count? Of course it's obscene that Donald Trump spends ten million decorating his private jet (and making it look like a ladies' powder room in the process) while some poor kid in Queens dies for lack of medical insurance. As soon as we perfect magic redistribution run by the wise and just, we'll be all set. In the meantime, they have socialized medicine in Canada, and you can get absolutely first rate medical care there. The problem is, you have to be a cow. If you're a human, well, wait in line, or get on the bus to Seattle.

In the meantime, Brian has documented how philosophers can't get out of relatively socialist Britain fast enough, and get over to the good, old evil US of A, where, by gummy, a philosopher can put down roots, make an honest living, split rails, bust sod, chop wood, and get his own little piece of the American dream. Excuse me for a moment while I laugh my head off. The problem with the UK? They don't make enough money there! They like it better here, where they can be more rich. You really have to wonder how they would vote if there was a chance they would determine the matter. But be charitable dear reader. Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue. In the meantime, if you find yourself in between a philosopher and a hundred dollar bill, my advice is get the hell out of the way!


posted by thomas at 1/28/2004 09:01:00 PM

 
Good reason not to shoot at US Army in Iraq
By Tom Smith

My brother (a litigator in HI) sent me this footage of an Apache helicopter at work in Iraq. I suspect it is making the rounds on the internet. It shows a number of things: the devastating effectiveness of a 30 mm chain gun with explosive rounds, the awfulness of war, and so forth. Not for the sqeamish. The link is to my family website as I have no idea how to upload a windows media file in blogger.
posted by thomas at 1/28/2004 01:04:00 PM

 
Dean scream remix
By Tom Smith

I still think Dean is getting shafted by the media. But that doesn't stop me from enjoying it. The Dean scream remix, courtesy of opinionjournal.com.
posted by thomas at 1/26/2004 03:10:00 PM

 
More on Legacy Policies in College Admissions
By Gail Heriot

Gentle readers may recall my posting on January 19th arguing against preferences in college admissions for the children of alumni and Frank Snyder's response, which I posted on January 22, defending these legacy preferences on the ground that they are helpful in raising funds. Here's my response to Frank's useful and interesting comments:

(1) Even if I were to agree that state universities ought to be able to give preferences to the offspring of wealthy donors for the good of the school as a whole, that's not what legacy preferences do. Few alumni are wealthy donors and most wealthy donors are not alumni. The legacy system runs on the bureaucratic award of a small leg up to the children, grandchildren and siblings of all alumni, regardless of their willingness to provide support for the school financial or otherwise. If anything, one would expect knowledge of such a program might discourage giving, since it renders actual support of the school unnecessary. Why make a handsome gift if the preference is automatic?

I have asked university officials at several schools whether they have any support for the notion that legacy preferences increase alumni giving, None has over been able to give me any. Of course, Frank may be right that alumni whose children also have attended their alma mater are more likely to give than those whose children have not attended the school. But even if they do, the line of causation would be difficult to trace. Are alumni more generous because their children have attended the school? Or did the child wish to attend the school because he was brought up in a household in which his parents spoke favorably of it (and hence were inclined to be generous with it)? Even if it could be established that having a child attend one's alma mater increases alumni generosity, that doesn't mean that having a child who is admitted to the school on a preference will increase alumni generosity. A student whose academic credentials place him below the ordinary cut-off for admission will often find himself at or near the bottom of the class. This may dampen the alumnus parent's enthusiasm for his alma mater rather than enhance it.

Under the circumstances, I have opposed such preferences. I think they will likely be seen by those not eligible for them as an unattractive effort to ensure that the haves of this world continue to be favored over the have nots. One can argue that they don't do much harm, since the preferences are too small to make much difference in actual cases. And that's true. But they send a poor message, and like all special pleading, they encourage further special pleading.

As an aside, I would be interested in learning the history of regularized legacy preferences. At what point in the history of American higher education did the Harvards and Yales of the world decide that the offspring of their graduates should get a regularized special break? (((I used to regard the practice as somewhat in tension with the much-vaunted Harvard/Yale practice of discriminating against their own undergraduates for admission to their graduate and professional schools. I have since been told that this latter practice is more public relations than actual policy; in practice it is said that the level of discrimination is somewhere between zero and vanishingly small. Its purpose is to give those schools a ready-made answer to the question, "If your undergraduate program is so good, why don't its graduates dominate your graduate programs to a greater degree?" I cannot, however, vouch for the accuracy of that information. But I digress ....))) I wonder if legacy policies didn?t get started back in the days of what Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell indelicately called the "Hebrew problem." Jewish students applying to Ivy League schools in the 1920s often had such good credentials that they were said to be "crowding out" the WASPish scions of wealth and privilege who had previously dominated the ivy halls. If so, I think that purpose long ago disappeared from the minds of those who run the institutions that currently such a legacy policy; whatever can be said about legacy programs, they are not intended and do not function to disadvantage Jews. But such a history could explain why the practice so ill fits its avowed purpose of fostering school spirit and enhancing alumni generosity and indicate why the preference as practiced is so minor today. Nobody really has his heart in it anymore, except maybe a few bureaucrats in the admissions office who have convinced themselves that their school really will reap millions on account of the policy. In general, legacy programs are a relic.

(2) Should public universities give preferences to the children of alumni if it can be shown that such a policy does on average enhance alumni generosity somewhat? Even then, I don't think so. (((I'm going to limit my remarks to public universities since my original remarks were so limited. I generally prefer to let private institutions go to heaven or hell in a handbasket of their own making and will acknowledge that Frank's argument is stronger when it is applied to them, although not necessarily strong enough.))

As Frank seems to acknowledge, there are certain things that the State shouldn't sell to the highest bidder even when, as I am assuming arguendo here, the highest bidder's check is not going to bounce. For example, few would dream of determining who attends public universities solely on the basis of auction. The whole purpose of publicly-subsidized higher education is to provide an education for those who otherwise might not be able to afford it. Selling off seats to the highest bidder destroys the argument for having such an institution.

In my view, even a more limited auction--one that sells only some seats and only to a certain class of persons--is also a mistake. In my earlier epistle, I argued that some of the problems with legacy policies can be exposed by attempting to extend the argument to other government functions: Just as the children of California taxpayers should be taxed at the same rate as everyone else even if it can be shown that families that remain in the state for more than one generation do more for the state (including making gifts to a state university) than those that don't, children of alumni should be treated the same for the purposes of state university admissions. It's unseemly to favor a group that is generally regarded as politically well-placed even if one can come up with a supposed benefit that doesn't flunk the laugh test on empirical plausibility. And I suspect most people would indeed regard it as unseemly. There's a reason university catalogues seldom mention legacy preferences and when they do, they do so only in vague incomprehensible terms: They recognize that such practices cannot stand the light of day.

I disagree that university admissions policies do not present a serious risk of corruption to government officials. Maybe they shouldn't, but voters care a lot about who gets in and who doesn't get in to state universities. Since voters, care, politicians (including that very special breed of politician, the public university official) care; they understand that seats in the university class have become an important source of pork and they want to be able to deliver as much of it as possible to their constituents. Each state has a choice: It can adopt a standard for admission--like "We seek the students whose high school record predicts the best possible academic performance"-- and hew as close to that line as possible in developing the details of its admissions policy. Alternatively, it can employ more complicated definitions of what constitutes the most desirable students. If it does, however, it can rely upon the fact that it will get a free-for-all driven by whoever has the most political clout for all manner of special consideration--legacy preferences, geographical preferences, donor preferences, preferences for the children of faculty and staff, racial preferences, ethnic preferences, athlete preferences, preferences for political activists, a new expanded round of racial preferences, and a new expanded round of ethnic preferences. It's hard enough to resist all this special pleading when you aren't carrying out a policy that on its face appears likely to benefit those who already have had advantages in life for purely speculative gain. When you are carrying out such a policy, it becomes about impossible to resist other policies.

(3) Frank can legitimately complain that I have resisted answering the question in its starkest form, which can be put this way: What should the president of a struggling college do when the world's richest man offers her a $500 million if only she will admit his son, who missed the SAT cut-off point at the school by only one point? The school will go bankrupt without the money. Frank would be right; I haven't answered it. On the whole, however, I think she is likely to be judged less harshly than the woman in the story that is sometimes attributed to Churchill and sometimes to Shaw:

---Madam, would you sleep with me for a million pounds?

---Well, yes, Mr. Churchill, I probably would.

---How about for one pound?

---What do you think I am Mr. Churchill, a common whore?

---We've established that, Madam; now we're simply haggling over price.



posted by Gail at 1/26/2004 02:56:00 PM

 
Prestigious Academic for Sale. Call 1-800-FOR-COLLEGE
By Tom Smith

Maybe I'm missing something in the interesting Oracle-PeopleSoft hostile tender offer. In its latest move, Oracle has nominated five new members it wants to put on the PeopleSoft board including two well know academics. PeopleSoft's response is that these academics and venture capitalists (as the other nominees are) are being paid by Oracle and are under contract with Oracle and so are just Oracle stooges, in effect. Now, what strikes me is that, well, yeah, that is obviously true. The PR point of hiring prestigious academics to be your nominees to the board of the target eludes me a little bit. Is it really any better than hiring Jones, your elevator operator, to be on the board, while assuring all the PeopleSoft shareholders not to worry, that he will do exactly what Larry Ellison (CEO of Oracle) tells him to do? Wouldn't the elevator operator be cheaper than the business school professor? I don't mean to sound superior. Law professors are famously for sale, by and large. When I was in practice we hired a very famous constitutional law professor to espouse some ridiculous proposition or other and it worked like this. We wrote the opinion, and faxed it to him. It came back with a few commas changed. We faxed it back and sent a check for ten large. The opinion came back with the law professor's signature. Perhaps judges are smart enough to completely discount such opinions--I don't know. But as to the Oracle bid, does anyone really think there is any significant chance that once in place the prestigious academic director would say "Ah ha! I have had a revelation! This takeover bid sucks!"

Come to think of it, there was another Delaware case involving Larry Ellison and a law professor at Stanford, Joe Grundfest, and Michael Boskin, an economics professor at Stanford, who were to sit on an independent litigation committee and moot whether some derivative suit or other should go forward against Oracle directors. The correct answer was undoubtedly NO!, since most derivative suits are a waste of time and shareholders' money, but it seemed to me the judge was equally correct when he said, oh, come on, you're telling me two Stanford professors are really independent when Larry Ellison practically has the Stanford pine tree tatooed on his forehead? Here Delaware law faced the difficult question of how ridiculous a joke an independent committee should be allowed to be. Ridiculous of course, but not very, very ridiculous is perhaps the rule. Maybe this case has been appealed and maybe it will be overturned. But I have seen what happens to professors whenever billions of dollars are in the vicinity, and let's just say "independence" is not the first word that springs to mind.

If I were a judge, I would only allow retained academic experts into my courtroom if I were desparate for a laugh. Otherwise, I would just hire my own on the tab of the parties, assuming the FRCP would allow this, which seems doubtful, but I wouldn't know.

Disclosure: Out of sheer laziness and disorganization, I have never, or only very rarely, consulted for pay, notwithstanding my fame as a brilliant corporate law professor. Should anyone wish to test my commitment to the above views by tempting me with huge pots of money, I suggest they contact me immediately.
posted by thomas at 1/26/2004 11:31:00 AM

 
Just a red dirt boy from Arkansas
By Tom Smith

His generalship Clark's protestations of his 'umble upbringing reminds me of this classic Monty Python skit.
posted by thomas at 1/26/2004 10:43:00 AM

 
Are you a redneck?
By Tom Smith

Every word of this is true. Just ask my neighbors.
posted by thomas at 1/24/2004 02:23:00 PM

 
Injustice in Idaho
By Tom Smith

This is the kind of injustice that just makes my blood boil. Who do those little people in Idaho think they are? Hat tip to lawyer-mother-triathelete-fearless-Baja-adventurer, my sister Trish Smith.
posted by thomas at 1/23/2004 09:49:00 AM

 
Pillars of modern morality
By Tom Smith

Reading the New York Times is like eating a big dish of pasta, knowing that somewhere in the midst of the tasty stuff there is a small pebble which sooner or later you will crunch painfully between your molars. I got all the way to the Arts section the other day before running into anything unusually objectionable. Then there was this. This review of the new Showtime series "The L word" which sports cavorting lesbians but which is really about how darn loyal and wonderful those beautiful, affluent, career-minded, did I mention beautiful?, lesbians can be, did not bother me for the usual reasons. The decline of public morality, blah, blah. What struck me was this little gem:

To some, that can seem like an oxymoron. There may be nothing wrong with performing Sapphic acts to entice the opposite sex, but it is hard to reconcile such tableaus with gay or feminist ideals of independence and self-respect.

Lines like these are a Times speciality. Let me see if I understand. Perish the thought that anyone would suggest it is immoral for say Mrs. Jones to have over her doubles partner so they can go at it until Mr. Jones feels ready. But wait, is this sort of thing consistent with feminism? Oh dear, we seem to have here a genuine moral conundrum, on the scale of those great dilemmas of freshman philosophy. It is sexually arousing, therefore good. That is one of the bedrock principles of Hollywood morality. And yet, it is perhaps inconsistent with feminism, which is, whatever else it is about, not about arousing men. I'm afraid this is all pretty deep water. Thank goodness we have the Times to guide us.
posted by thomas at 1/21/2004 08:46:00 PM

 
Frank Snyder responds on Legacy Preferences
By Gail Heriot

Frank Snyder, Associate Professor of Law at Texas Wesleyan University, sent me an e-mail responding to my post on Monday on legacy preferences. Here's a slightly edited version of his argument:

"There may be a moral problem with legacy admissions, but the financial issue is more complicated than [Gail] suggests. It's not a question of taxpayers supporting the children of favored alumni. Taxpayers pay only a portion of the cost of state university education; a good deal of the rest is made up of contributions from alumni. Legacy programs exist because they enhance alumni giving. The parents whose children are admitted to the school are the ones who disproportionately fund the stuff the legislature won't pay for. In a sense, schools auction off some of their seats to the children of rich alumni, to help underwrite the education of all the students.

"Let's say that a hypothetical school (perhaps like the University of San Diego) has a rich alumnus who's willing to give a lot of money to build a big new science center, but who's really interested seeing his 18-year-old son attend the school. Would it be "corrupt" for the school to admit the donor’s son even though he's just a little bit below the ordinary admissions criteria, and therefore secure the money that will go to benefit all alumni? Is it "fair" to the other students? If the son later decides to go out for the football team, and dad agrees to build a big new athletic training facility, is it corrupt if the school puts the son on the team?

"True, a school like USD is a private institution, and bringing the state in raises a somewhat different issue. It's perfectly possible to argue that when the state is involved, the rich shouldn't be able to buy things the poor can't-whether it's a place on the Olympic team, a seat in a state university, a cellular frequency, lunch with a Senator, a ticket on the Space Shuttle, timber from public lands, or a sky box in a public stadium. But that's not because taxpayers are providing a subsidy, but because it (i) offends our notions of fairness and (ii) creates a risk of corruption of government officials. The official corruption argument here seems weak; of all the things rich people can bribe officials to get, seats in state universities probably figure well down the list. As for fairness, that's complex. After all, why is it fair that dumb students (who pay full price) subsidize the smart students (who get academic scholarships)? The smart students, after all, are going to be more successful than the dumb students and in a "fair" world they should pay more, not less. If the answer is that smart students make the institution stronger and more attractive, and thereby benefit all students, the same is true of students with rich parents.

"As for the suggestion that administrators like legacy programs merely because they make dealing with alumni easier, I can't (as somebody who sits on an admissions committee) see why it is harder to tell an alumnus, "Sorry, we do not have a legacy admissions policy," than it is to say, "We have a legacy admissions process, but your kid was too dumb and you're not prominent enough even to qualify for that lower standard." The ubiquity of legacy programs at state and private institutions all over the country suggests that there is a powerful economic reason for them, not merely that they are relics of the past that happen to suit the convenience of administrators. I suspect that disposing of them at state institutions will only increase the comparative advantage of private institutions in attracting the wealthy donors of the world."

Some of what Frank has said, I agree with. I will try to respond soon. Thanks for writing, Frank.
posted by Gail at 1/21/2004 05:05:00 PM

 
So you'd like to be eaten by a grizzly bear
By Tom Smith

Bear activist Timothy Treadwell, (lately) of Malibu, California has been eaten by a grizzly bear, along with his girlfriend, whose bad judgment apparently extended to both men and bears. This interesting article in the ever entertaining Outside magazine tells the story well, if perhaps too sympathetically. Treadwell took the Walt Disney approach to bears, thinking that he could bond with them, sort of brother to brother, sort of like the Lion King, only with bears. And now he's part of the Circle, the Circle of Life.

His last meal, he being the main course, was captured on videotape, don't ask me why. He died reasonably well it seems, yelling at his soon to be second course companion to save herself. To no avail.

The rangers arrived later, and shot one of the bears feasting, though whether it was the one who killed them, who knows. It only took 11 shots from the rangers probably .40 caliber to bring the 1000 pounds of highly evolved, highly intelligent predator down. When the rangers came back to look at the bear carcass, all that was left was the head. Other bears, thrifty souls that they are when it comes to meat, had eaten him.

I find grizzly bears fascinating. I spent a summer in Alaska almost 20 years ago now and had a couple close encounters with grizzly bears. When I was there, there was this really stupid debate between the tree hugger types who argued that you should never go armed into the bush, because then you would be over-confident, and the bears would sense your arrogance, and thus your chances of getting attacked would be higher. The more sensible view was that you should carry a .45 magnum, which would at least give you a chance if Mrs. Grizzly decided she deserved a break today and you were the closest thing to a Big Mac.

The closest call I had came at the end of a 9 day trek around the Muldrow Glacier I went on with my now wife and a very British fellow I knew slightly at Oxford and ran into quite by accident on a bus coming out of Denali National Park. Walking out along the edge of the glacier, down Gravel Creek, we stumbled across a bear eating something, probably a caribou. The bear was standing up on his or her hind legs, batting away carrion birds trying to get a piece of the action. A wonderful wilderness moment. We decided to give the bear a wide berth, and so climbed up the scree onto the glacier itself, maybe 25 vertical feet to our left. That's when the bear walked away from his kill and climbed up on the glacier too, blocking our planned route of exit. Bears may not be able to talk, but they are very good at what they do, which is kill large mammals and eat them. At this moment, I breathed a silent prayer, which went like this: "Sh@#, F*&%, Sh@#, F*&@, F#@%!!!!!" Just to be clear, this was classic predatory behavior by the bear. Whenever anybody tells you about bears' natural curiosity, their desire to explore their world, etc. etc., remember you are listening to a hamburger with legs. The nose up in the air is not a sign of a bear thinking "Ohhhh, maybe it's a new friend, what a wonderfully diverse universe I live in!" A better translation would be "Mmmmmmm! Meat! Meat!" Think of how you feel when you smell the Weber working on a filet mignon and you haven't eaten since breakfast. Now picture the filet dressed up in a little backpack and booties. That's you.

We decided to get off the glacier. Unfortunately, whether out of sheer panic or my natural clumsiness, I decided stupidly I could glissade down the scree we had just climbed up, my having forgotten that it was frozen solid to the ice. This was remarkably stupid, as I had just climbed up it. Of course I tripped and did a full somersault coming down into the creek bed. I looked up just in time to see Jeanne attempt the same manuveur. She also fell and tumbled. That neither one of us broke anything probably saved our lives. I put down Jeanne's following me to loyalty. She later told me that she was thinking that just because I had fallen did not mean she could not pull the descent off we ease. Richard the Lion-hearted gracefully picked his way down. Then, and this is the important thing, so did the grizzly bear.

We were in what long-time outdoorsmen call "a pickle." I had no idea how to get past the bear. Then Richard came up with the following idea. He said he had read somewhere that grizzly bears hated rock and roll. He suggested that he lead us out, marching style, as we all followed his lead singing Elvis Presley's classic "Blue Suede Shoes." I am not making any of this up. Still dazed from my fall, and naturally curious as to whether I was soon to die a horrible death, and that before or after I watched my best friend get devoured alive, what could I say, but what the hell. I didn't have any better ideas. Richard started singing the tune in a surprisingly credible Elvis imitation. The boy could sing! We joined along as best as we could, marching right at the 1000 pound monster. The bear stared at us for a moment, as if to say 'WTF is this?!' then scampered back to his caribou or whatever it was. We marched all the way into the valley of the river, and saw no more bears until we were safely on the bus back to the ranger station. Richard went on to be a master at one of England's great public schools. You can see why they had an empire.

posted by thomas at 1/20/2004 09:43:00 AM

 
Legacy of Favoritism
By Gail Heriot

Last week's announcement by President Robert Gates that Texas A&M University would abolish its so-called "legacy policy" was good news--great news in fact--though some haved complained that his timing could have been better. Back in December, Gates earned my respect and admiration by deciding that A&M would continue to shun race-based admissions despite the Supreme Court's recent decision "authorizing" such policies in pursuit of diversity. Not surprisingly, Gates' decision to retain colorblind admissions brought down upon him the wrath of Texas legislators, who attempted to bully him into adopting preferences for Blacks and Hispanics. The arguments they made, insofar as they made any, were mainly the same old stuff--we must destroy equality in order to achieve equality--but on one of the aspects of the issue they had a point. It is also wrong to give preferential treatment of the sons, daughters and grandchildren of A&M alumni. Gates says that his had been planning to abolish the legacy program even before he came under pressure and I believe him. For the life of me, I can't understand how these relics of an earlier (and more corrupt) time have survived at state universities more than six minutes into the modern era. It's not that it's wrong to abolish race preferences until one has also abolished legacy preferences; they are independent wrongs. But it would have been a nice gesture to abolish both back in December--not crucial but nice.

The legacy program has tended to benefit White students disproportionately at A&M, though not as strongly as one might have thought. Blacks and Hispanics have benefited too; their proportions among those admitted under the legacy program have not been wildly different from their proportions among those admitted under the regular program. But racial "disparate impact" is not what makes the policy wrongheaded. It's wrong because it injects irrelevant matters into a decision that ought to be based on the student's academic and personal record, not on his pedigree. And it would be wrong even if it had had no racially disparate impact.

Why do universities do it? It's said that it fosters school spirit among alumni. But my suspicion is that its real function is to insulate administrators from fielding endless phone calls from individual alumni hoping to use whatever clout they have. It routinizes that task.("Yes, Mr. Throckmorton, your son did receive special consideration, but unfortunately even with that special consideration, he didn't quite make it. Our admissions policies are just so competitive these days. It has been wonderful talking to you ...") Such a benefit may loom large in the minds of administrators because it affects them directly--larger than the cost in terms of academic standards, which does not affect them except quite indirectly.

The Wall Street Journal's editorial a few days ago was kinder to legacy programs than I would have been. It stated simply:

"There is a genuine debate to be had about whether legacy admissions, particularly at public universities using tax dollars, are good pulic policy. Should the children of some taxpayers be treated more favorably than the children of others? We tend to let the institutions decide what's in their own best interests."

I'm not so sure how genuine the debate is. Yes, yes, yes, I do believe that discrimination on the basis of race is the more serious wrong, since discrimination on the basis of race and not discrimination on the basis of parents' alumni status has long been the poisonous issue in this country's history. There's even a law against race discrimnation (though the Supreme Court seems to have forgotten this). But both of them stink. And if a state university ought to be able to favor the offspring of its old boys over other applicants in order to foster school spirit, what other forms of pedigree favoritism ought to be permitted? What shouldn't state taxing authorities be permitted to give tax breaks to the children of long-time state residents in order to foster state spirit? It's probably true that people whose families have lived in the state for generations are more apt to remain in the state, feel themselves to be part of the state and its culture, and promote the state than transient residents. Transient residents are ... well ... transient. But who cares? Such a policy would be impossible to justify.

The one redeeming aspect of the issue is that legacy preferences are an extremely minor factor in college admssions today. At the University of Michigan, for example, legacy applicants received one point (as opposed to Black and Hispanic applciants who got 20 points) on a 100 point scale. It functioned literally as a tie-breaker. Racial preferences, on the other hand, leap-frogged less-qualified students over much more-qualified students. Minority students admitted frequently found themselves over their head academically. That is much less likely to be the case with legacy students.


posted by Gail at 1/19/2004 04:36:00 PM

 
Incisive commentary on Justice-Cowgirl O'Connor
By Tom Smith

Did you miss the Lehrer News Hour commentary the other day on Justice O'Connor? I should have been so lucky. It went something like this:

Jim Lehrer: We're here today to discuss how wonderful Justice O'Connor is. Let me begin by asking Doug Kmiec, Dean of Pepperdine Law School, this question. In what do you think her wonderfulness most consists?

Dean Kmiec: It's hard to say, Jim. She is wonderful in so many ways. I have argued before her before, and hope to do so again. I think if I had to say, however, it would be her profound wisdom, her sensitivity to the fact that every case has to be decided by a detailed attention to the facts, which, as you know, are different in every case. Indeed, there's just no telling what fact may turn out to be the decisive thing!

Jim Lehrer: Dean Sullivan of Stanford, wonderful attention to the facts?

Dean Sullivan: Well, that, and so much more. You know, she grew up on a ranch, in the West, with cows and everything. Six guns, Indians, purple sage, the whole bit, one would think. That gives her wonderfulness an extra dimension that you don't normally get inside the beltway.

[Professor Smith at home: Oh God. Oh no. Ack. ack. ack. Jeez, I just cleaned that rug . . . . Biscuit! Get away! That's not good for you, girl!]

Jim Lehrer: John Yoo, professor of law, is wonderful a wonderful enough word to describe the wonderfulness of Justice O'Connor?

John Yoo: Well, I'm not sure wonderful is the word I would choose. To be wonderful, I think a judge should follow the law, not just make it up so as to maximize one's personal influence and that of the court one happens to be on. When judges don't follow the law, it makes me nervous. I think people who make up laws should be elected.

Jim Lehrer: Just making it up as she goes along, Dean Kmiec?

Dean Kmeic: Oh, no! Oh no, no, no, no, no! You are neglecting Justice O'Connor's exquisite sensitiving to the facts . . . .

Dean Sullivan: That's right!

Dean Kmeic: Her sensitive sensitivity to the ebb and flow of the emerging growth of the penumbra emmanating from the aura of the meaning of the changing dimension of our popular understanding of the . . .

Dean Sullivan: legitimacy

Dean Kmeic: . . . Of the court, which she so wonderfully understands, in a very wise way.

Jim Lerher: Legitimacy, Professor Yoo? Wisdom?

Professor Yoo: I would just like her to follow the law, not just flop around in the middle so she can be important. It's not just about maximizing political power, you know.

Political Scientist: Yes it is. Of course it is. What are you talking about?

Professor Yoo: Look, let me put it this way. Does anybody seriously think that anyone will be reading O'Connor opinions 20 years from now, as we read today the opinions of a Holmes or a Hand or even a Brennan (though I admit this last one is a stretch)?

[Professor Smith at home: Read . . . O'Connor opinions ?! . . . ah ha ha hahahahahahahaha! Gulp. choke. choke. choke. Sheesh. That was my last Stone Pale Ale . . . Any one that reads an O'Connor opinion for less than $500 an hour is a masochist . . . risking brain damage . . . God, though, what about a Souter opinion? Death by a thousand cuts. Rather read . . . Or a Kennedy opinion . . . the horror, the horror. . . ]

Dean Sullivan: It's hard to tell what will be influential in 20 years . . . I suppose anything can happen . . .

Political Scientist: That's right. Anything!

Dean Kmiec: I think we should get back to the wonderfulness of Justice O'Connor. I just want to give her a big, fat kiss.

Dean Sullivan: Me too.

Political Scientist: Would someone bring me some coffee?

John Yoo: I'm sure she's a nice woman. I'm not saying she's stupid (though I'm not denying it either). I would just like it if she would act like a judge. That's what it is supposed to be, you know, a court . . .

Dean Kmeic: I wonder if I might play for you this little ballad I've written about Sandra Day? It goes to the tune of "Yippy Tie Yie Yay, Get Along Little Doggies" . . . It's called "The Sunshine Justice" . . .

Jim Lehrer: I'm afraid we're out
of time.

[Professor Smith at home: Come here, Biscuit. Would you like to be a Supreme Court Justice? Biscuit, you're such a smart girl . . . ]


posted by thomas at 1/16/2004 06:57:00 PM

 
Huubble condemned to fall apart?
By Tom Smith

What is this about? The space telescope is much more important than the silly international space station. This is why government space exploration worries me. Someone should start a company called boldlygo.com and let them explore space with private money. I like space much more than the average person, but I don't see why the average person should have to pay for my hobbies.
posted by thomas at 1/16/2004 04:24:00 PM

 
Deep thoughts on friendship
By Tom Smith

Essayist Roger Rosenblatt proves once more that it is no bar to success in journalism to have significantly below normal intelligence.
posted by thomas at 1/16/2004 01:29:00 PM

 
Anti-Bush TV ads from moveon.org
By Tom Smith

Here are the finalists for moveon.org's contest for anti-Bush ads. I am trying to broaden my horizons and see what the enemy is thinking. Some of the ads are funny. No true greatness in evidence, however.
posted by thomas at 1/16/2004 12:53:00 PM

 
More tension with Brazil
By Tom Smith

Oh dear, the heat is rising with our steamy neighbor to the south.
posted by thomas at 1/15/2004 10:36:00 AM

 
New City Journal is out
By Tom Smith

City Journal is consistently a great read. This piece by James Q. Wilson, a true god-like entity in my book, is particularly good.
posted by thomas at 1/15/2004 10:22:00 AM

 
Which reminds me
By Tom Smith

Professor Rappaport's review of the Third Man reminded me of The 39 Steps, which reminds me to mention that you should read all the novels of John Buchan, most politically incorrect author in the last century, or one of them anyway. Intrigue, brave Brits (or Scots, actually) imperialism triumphant, dastardly people of dubious heritage. Well, yes, he is a racist, probably, a la Kipling, but that was another time, and you can overlook it or disapprove and still enjoy the cracking good yarns. Well written? Well, no. Plots tend toward the elaborate and creaky at times, but where else do you get the world being saved over port and cigars, travelling in disguise to foreign ports crawling with German spies, the Great Game and all that, in such unapologetic style?
posted by thomas at 1/14/2004 11:30:00 AM

 
Daily fix
By Tom Smith

George Will is unfortunately right about this. Could Dean win? Could any Democrat win? Of course they could!

Here's a blog from some guy who seems pretty well informed about California politics.

Tony Blakley at the Washington Times is deeply misguided about immigration, as most the conservatives seem to be. I hope to blog this substantively sometime in the future, but the same Californians who bitch about illegal immigration have their cars washed, their food produced, their houses cleaned, their children cared for, their lawns mowed, their dishes washed, their clothes made, and on and on, by illegal immigrants or people they would have to pay a lot more, were it not for illegal immigration. You want to raise taxes? Give us "secure borders." Illegal immigration may be illegal, but it is also our economic policy. It's time to put our mouth where our money is.

Here's some typical Republican over-confidence--Rich Lowry at the National Review. Yes, few Republicans are going to vote for Dean or Clark. Let's remember this when we're watching Woodstock on the Washington Mall. It's not about us. I couldn't watch Gore on TV without getting ill, and yet he won the popular vote. He would be president but for whatever passes for legal thought in the minds (sic) of Justices Kennedy and O'Connor.

Could Bush win California? Doubt it. But maybe force Dems to defend it.

Going back to the Moon and to Mars should get him the geek vote. Speaking of geeks, here's Michael Crichton's official site. The inimitable and invaluable Ron Bailey on Mars. Has some reservations. Ron's great, but never go out drinking with him the night before your first day at a new job, in any town where he knows the bars (which includes most).

And in Iran, the people . . . united . . . will never be defeated! Or as they say in Iraq, Liberty! Whiskey! Sexy! Wouldn't that be just fine! It's not too early for the left to start working on their spin that this is not really a victory for America and freedom. I wonder if the clerics would be willing to use WMDs on their own people? I guess it depends on what God tells them.

Friends is finally over, thank goodness. Too bad they didn't have an episode where they all eaten by large predators. Among other things, that show had a bad influence on women's hair styles.

Here's a sweet human interest story about a Palestinian mom.

Here's Krugman's latest op-ed. How many intellectually dishonest things can you find in this column? It's like playing I Spy with your kids.

Norwegian billionaire climber manages to kill himself in South Africa.

I think the final WTC memorial design looks kinda ugly, but what do I know.

posted by thomas at 1/14/2004 11:22:00 AM

 
Wesley Crusher has a web site
By Tom Smith

Wesley Crusher has a blog. Life is too weird. Check out what he's been doing since TNG. Maybe he should go to law school.
posted by thomas at 1/13/2004 01:12:00 PM

 
Army War College SSI report critical of Iraq war, war on terror
By Tom Smith

Here is a link to get the report by Jeffery Record critical of the Iraq war and the war on terrorism. Personally, it seems to me a non-story. Whether the report is any good, I don't know yet.
posted by thomas at 1/13/2004 01:02:00 PM

 
Maybe giving to Oxford isn't such a great idea
By Tom Smith

I was thinking about giving some money to Oxford, one of my alma maters. Instead, I think I will send the money here. I think I like the idea of helping pay for an ambulance more than, however indirectly, the airfare of some British twit who wants to come over here and spew hatred against Jews. Or maybe there's some Jewish organization at Oxford I could give to? On top of everything else, it is just profoundly wrong, for some "poet" in perhaps the most cossetted place on Earth, to rant as if he knows what it's like to pick up the pieces of a child off a street, or to call a father or husband and tell him that his wife or daughter is dead and that the body is "non-viewable." What a disgrace.
posted by thomas at 1/13/2004 09:53:00 AM

 
Redecorating hell, part 2
By Tom Smith

This morning I had a great idea. We need to put something over the fireplace, right? A painting or something. Well, why not, now work with me here, put a 42 inch plasma flatscreen TV?!! When you weren't watching Rio Bravo, True Grit, The Godfather, Goodfellas, Chinatown, GB&U, LOTR, Furturama, Animal Planet, Extreme Animals, and so forth, you could set it on a screen saver of some painting or outdoor scene or whatever! 2 birds, 1 stone! And, you could get one for less than an entertainment center would cost! Brilliant. Ran it by Jeanne. Incomprehendably, she said "no." Just "no." It would look like a painting, I said. No, she said, it would look like a big TV screen with a picture of a painting on it. So I asked my 10 year old what he thought of my idea. "I think it sounds retarded," he said. "Don't say 'retarded,'" I said, but my heart wasn't in it. So often, the fate of genius is to be misunderstood.
posted by thomas at 1/12/2004 09:49:00 AM

 
Hayek Bio
By Tom Smith

This looks good. via Virginia Postrel
posted by thomas at 1/12/2004 09:36:00 AM

 
Protectionism
By Tom Smith

This piece by the one of the insufferable Senators of New York and Paul Craig Roberts is generating web buzz. The idea is that now that knowledge can be transferred globally on broad bandwidth, the case for free trade has to be rethought. Comparative advantage is obsolete.

See if you can spot the flaw in the argument. You may have missed it because it is so obvious. If knowledge workers in India can do what same could do in the US, but for one fifth the cost, then that is a comparative advantage. That's how it works, Chuck. It doesn't matter if it's making shoes or interpreting MRI's, if it can been done more cheaply in India than New York, then it makes sense to do it in India. But who will benefit? Well, sick American people who need MRIs for one. Workers who pay health insurance premiums for another. One could go on and on. There is no difference between shoes and ones and zeros.

I could rant on this point, but I will resist. There may be instances out there of super-duper, cybernetic, brave new world, think outside the box, it's a brand new paradigm, market failure, with oh boy what a great chance for the lovely government to intervene, but what it usually is is that someone can't be bothered to think of the thing in terms of Econ 101 -- what does it cost? Supply and demand. Somebody trying to make more money. Markets coordinating factors of production.

So (in whiney Schumer voice now) how are we all going to work with all those smart Indians and Chinese working too? It's not fair! Boo hoo hoo! Here's an idea. Why don't we do what we're better at? Like invent the diagnostic technology they can do the grunt work for in China. Design the software they can print up over there. Discover the drugs that can be manufactured somewhere else. "Knowledge work" itself has many layers and specializations. Free trade, now more than ever!
posted by thomas at 1/12/2004 09:04:00 AM

 
Her Life as a Blog Widow
By Michael Rappaport

Dan Drezner's wife has written a funny piece, called "My Life as a Blog Widow." Here is an excerpt:

It's not that I'm anti-blog or anything.

The scene in our house on an average day: Our son is yelling for something, dinner is on the stove -- which, to be fair, Dan likely cooked -- the dog is throwing up on the carpet. I look for my husband as some sort of help and he is tethered to the computer. I am thoroughly convinced that he will blog through the birth of any future children. I think I may have to ask Andrew Sullivan to coach me through my next delivery.

As I have said, being married to one blogger has been difficult enough. Not only does my husband spend time working on this thing, but people actually read it -- no surprise to you, dear reader, but a hell of a shock to me. I'll listen to what Dan's saying maybe half the time -- on a good day.

And I'm surprised by the audience members: a friend's dad, my closest friend from college, our neighbors. The blog recently came up at the condo board meeting! Don't these people own televisions?

Now in our small community of academics and students, most of whom are liberal, everyone knows what Dan thinks. --Drezner is a Republican, Drezner worked for W., Drezner is a Halliburton apologist -- I constantly get dirty looks on the street. As a liberal, I know that many liberals think that Republicans are people who eat babies and kick puppies. For the record, I have never seen Dan do either, and I have watched carefully.

Well, certainly that never happens at my hourse, nor, I can attest, at Smith's. Neither of us ever cook dinner.
posted by MichaelTom at 1/12/2004 08:21:00 AM

 
Letter from a trooper
By Tom Smith

Brian Leiter has posted a letter from a trooper in the 82nd Airborne in Iraq, presenting a very negative view of the situation on the ground over there. It makes for riveting reading. I don't know whether, and tend to doubt that this attitude is typical, but it's worth paying attention to in any event.
posted by thomas at 1/11/2004 02:26:00 PM

 
Life on Mars, God is Dead
By Tom Smith

There is a hackneyed way of looking at the history of astronomy that sees is as an ever escalating insult to humankind's sense of its own specialness. Not surprisingly, the New York Times takes this spin on the possibility that evidence of life may be found on Mars. (Though I personally prefer the hope that we may find that that is where Grey Davis has been hiding out.)

Readers of this blog may wish, however, to go beyond the pat, middle-brow view. More sophisticated thought about life in the universe suggests that microbial life might indeed be common, but anything like intelligent life, or even large animals of any sort, might be extremely rare. The argument is complex and as in any live scientific debate, controversial. But suffice it to say that the Carl Sagan view that there must be billions of advanced civilizations out there, mostly holding views remarkably like those prevailing on the upper west side of Manhattan, is way over. A good book on the probable scarcity of large animal life in the universe is this. Carl Sagan wrote a science fiction novel, Contact, which has some interesting ideas, but becomes extremely silly when we learn that the Universe is a sort of WPA project of a very, very advanced civilization. So advanced they are still in the New Deal. I can't think of any book that more clearly substitutes faith in Government for faith in God.

On a much higher level of abstraction is the argument over the anthropic principle, the idea that the universe must conform to a set of laws that makes it possible that there will be intelligent life to observe it. Some see in this idea a revival of the argument from design, that there must be a God since it is very unlikely the universe would support creatures such as ourselves otherwise. Frank Tipler is the main spokesman of this view. (He extends his argument to bizarre lengths here.)
posted by thomas at 1/11/2004 01:43:00 PM

 
Dry sex and AIDS in Africa
By Tom Smith

I heard about the southern African practice of "dry sex" this summer from a doctor in Peru. I could hardly credit it, but apparently it is a major cause of the spread of AIDS. Weird.
posted by thomas at 1/11/2004 08:36:00 AM

 
Catholic lawmakers who support abortion told not to receive communion
By Tom Smith

This is an interesting development in a Wisconsin diocese.
posted by thomas at 1/10/2004 09:58:00 AM

 
Redecorating hell
By Tom Smith

The object, of course, is to make your Southern Californian tract house look as if it was the last, best effort of the Pasadena version of the Arts and Crafts movement, or the summer retreat of a wealthy Mexican rancher, or something that, if you thought about it, you know you will never achieve. Part of the reason you will fail is, long, long before you get where you once imagined you would get, you will stop caring about what your house looks like. Because you had no idea how much it would cost to buy a chair, let alone a look. It is just a trivial species of the vanity of human wishes.

"I look at this room," our decorator said, "and pine is still winning." Oak is supposed to be winning. You can mix pine and oak, but oak has to win.

We got sisal carpet, or fake sisal rather. The real sisal is extremely impractical. The fake sisal is only very impractical. It shows stains. It unravels. We had had the sisal a matter of hours when our dog caught her collar on it and ran away, pulling with her a long thread, like that of an unraveling sweater, producing a quickly growing gap in the family room floor. But, and this is the really important thing, our decorator likes it.

I have learned that there are some important legal reforms needed. It should be legal to tell anyone working on your house: "I will be there Tuesday so you can come in and work, but you should know, if you don't show up, I will kill you." It should also be legal to actually kill them when they don't show up. You should also be allowed to kill them for installing things improperly and for charging you more than the estimate. Many humane ways to kill workmen are available.

To replace our perfectly ordinary cabinetry would cost as much as a new 700 series BMW. That is just wrong. I wouldn't spend that much on a car, let alone on shelves to keep cans and dishes. Why do people spend ten of thousands of dollars to store stuff they can buy at Target? If we had inherited the family china from Lord Douchebag maybe it would be a different story, but we didn't. Anybody who cares that much about china or cabinets needs to get a life. When the time comes, they will get painted. Our decorator will choose the color. That way we can be sure he will like it.

Did I mention that the housekeeper's little girl drew all over my leather club chair with a blue pen? It won't come out. The housekeeper has been fired for failure to keep house in this and many other ways, some of which show up on the carpet. It serves me right for buying a chair without my decorator's permission. He doesn't like the chair. He didn't say so, but I can tell.
posted by thomas at 1/09/2004 05:42:00 PM

 
God and gays yet again
By Tom Smith

James Tarrato opines on opinionjournal.com:

The kindest thing that can be said about [Dean's] comment is that it shows a very crude mind at work. 'God created it, therefore it isn't sinful' makes no sense from the standpoint of Christian theology, which holds that man is innately sinful and must seek salvation through Jesus. In our pluralistic society, of course, no one has to believe that, but Dean does claim to be a Christian.

Actually, James, it makes a lot of sense from the standpoint of Christian theology. In fact, "God created it, therefore it (whatever God created) can't be evil" is a fair summary of the starting point of St. Augustine's analysis of the notoriously difficult problem of evil. Indeed, it is precisely because of this premise that philosophical theology often analyzes evil as a species of non-being. The traditional theology, very crudely stated, is that God created man good, then through some original sinful choice, man got corrupted and this corrupt nature is somehow inherited by the rest of us, putting us in a state of original sin. But God didn't create us with a sinful nature; that's the fault of Adam and Eve. So the story goes.

Of course, that does not mean there is not some natural law account of the sinfulness of homosexuality that could be made. Without having thought about it carefully, I can at least say it makes a difference to me that some people are probably genetically destined to be gay. I'm not sure what follows from that, but for all the tut-tutting about the so-called naturalistic fallacy, I doubt many people would consider it ethically irrelevant.

None of this goes to the point of Howard Dean's possibly genetic disposition to stick his foot in his mouth.
posted by thomas at 1/08/2004 05:16:00 PM

 
Bush on immigration
By Tom Smith

And it seems to me Sullivan is right about Bush's initiative on immigration. I don't know the details, but anything that inspires such confusion on NPR must be good. The NPR approach was to interview one anti-immigration foamer from California about how this was de facto amnesty and another from La Raza about how it was racist.

Our immigration system is chaotic, corrupt and insane. A good place to start fixing it is some sort of legal status for the millions of illegal people here who are an integral part of our economy, at least here in Southern California. Only the strongest sort of leadership from the White House will be able to pull this off. I wonder if Bush really means this, or if it's just political window dressing.
posted by thomas at 1/08/2004 01:30:00 PM

 
Andrew, see your doctor
By Tom Smith

Andrew Sullivan says he has the flu. There is something you can do about it. This stuff, Tamiflu, really works. I had to drive all the way to Santee to track some down, but this anti-viral turns the horror of flu into something more like a slightly worse than average cold. At least it did for me. Get with the latest technology, Andrew!
posted by thomas at 1/08/2004 01:22:00 PM

 
Brits unarmed
By Tom Smith

Those poor Brits. Mark Steyn on their predicament versus us well-armed Amuricins.

Just by way of contrast, here how's things work in my neighborhood. I would be the first to admit it is not normal. Behind the house we used to live in (in the same development) is the abandoned Peg Leg Mine. It was the classic attractive nuisance, if you can call a hole in a mountain surrounded by broken glass and empty beer bottles attractive. All manner of strange people were drawn to the mine. Frequently they discovered the short cut up our long driveway. One day a truck straight out the Beverly Hillbillies drove up the drive. Out poured at least a dozen people. How do I put this. They each looked like Crumb or some other nasty underground cartoonist decided to draw unflattering stereotypes of every sort of person from the lower depths. I had never seen so many canted teeth and unusual ears in my life. Every racial group was represented and represented badly. They parked on our property. They walked up to the mine, leaving the wimin behind. I told them to leave. She said "Go ahead and call the sheriff. It won't be the first time." They were, as my 7 year old would put it, weally scawy.

I did not call the sheriff. A story on why I did not call the sheriff some other time. Suffice it to say the worry with calling the San Diego Sheriff's Department is that a deputy will give himself a heart attack attempting to exit the vehicle. So I called my landlord, who lived next door. Former rock and pro sports promoter and now expatriate, Gary as I will call him (that being his name) soon appeared in my driveway armed with several of his many dogs, a shotgun, and two pistols. He looked worse than his usual ten miles of bad road. Their conversation went like this; "Whaddiya doin' here?" "Lookin' at the mine." "Well you know better than that. Now git." They got, with remarkable alacrity. Pretty good for a man who was too to cheap fix a screen. When I told him, "Gary, the garage is full of rats," he said "My garage is full of rats. Rats are no big deal. My Rolls is full of rats." He had a Rolls Royce. Nice, but for a dented door he was too cheap to fix. Its heavily insulated body was full of rats. We finally moved out and bought a house only a few doors away.

OK, one more bit. The last big event at Gary's house happened one morning when I awoke to a loud voice saying "Come out with your hands up, we have a search warrant!" Groggy with sleep, I assumed the kids had turned on the TV downstairs on a school morning, strictly forbidden, and went downstairs, fuming. The TV was off. The voice was coming from outside. Like any good homeowner, I wandered out to the driveway in my boxer shorts, and there on Gary's hill was parked a big black SWAT van, along with at least 6 officers in full combat gear, M-16s, black fatigues, the whole bit. Buff young people wearing DEA flack jackets milled around on my street. Some loud noises, maybe a door being broken down, followed. A man in his shorts who needed to read Dr. Atkins stumbled out of Gary's house and was thrown to the ground. I put on some clothes and went down to chat up the DEA. They treated me like the nosy civilian I was, and would tell me nothing, except to watch the news that night. One agent said "These houses are nice. How much do they go for?" "About $50,000 less than they did an hour ago." The news that night announced that several big busts had been made in San Diego as part of a nationwide crackdown on internet sellers of date rape drugs. I hope Gary had nothing to do with it. He had rented out his big house and was living in the Philippines.
posted by thomas at 1/08/2004 11:20:00 AM

 
Dr. Laura right for a change
By Tom Smith

I can't stand Dr. Laura. Sometimes she is all I can find on the radio, when my car is too much of a mess to find the next Teaching Company tape and I've listened to all my CD's past bearing. I'm convinced her real appeal is to sadists who enjoy listening to her berate the pathetic people who call her up. Her call screeners must select stupid people who will sit there and take her simplistic advice without complaint. Yesterday, for example, 12 year old Mandy called up to say her stepfather was verbally abusive. Without more, the doctor of plant husbandry or whatever here PhD is in, tells Mandy she should move across the country and live with real real father. But is her real father a drug addict? Employed? Might he also be abusive? For an authority figure to tell a 12 year to leave home on the basis of a 60 second conversation borders on the criminal, and is at least immoral.

That being said, it does sound like she understands something about men.
posted by thomas at 1/08/2004 10:42:00 AM

 
TV addiction
By Tom Smith

Now here's a suit worth following.
posted by thomas at 1/08/2004 10:33:00 AM

 
Helping us understand why Paul Krugman is so annoying
By Tom Smith

This is good. But it does not explain all the reasons Krugman is annoying, but for reasons of space, I will stop now.
posted by thomas at 1/07/2004 07:09:00 PM

 
Epiphany Sunday
By Tom Smith

Last Sunday was Epiphany Sunday, the day on which the RC Church traditionally celebrates the visit of the Magi to the Christ child. (The history of the feast is complex.) Here is a good article on the astronomical aspect of the Star of Bethlehem.

Our pastor, Fr. Jerry O'Donnell at St. Luke's Church in El Cajon, well known, and deservedly so, as an excellent homilist, opined that the names of the "three kings" were medieval legend merely. However, there is an interesting book by British travel writer William Dalrymple, In Xanadu, an amusing account of his retracing of Marco Polo's route to China. While in Iran, Dalrymple tracked down Polo's story that the town of Saveh was the origin of the three Magi, whom Polo refers to by the traditional names of Jaspar, Melchior and Balthasar. It may be the source of the medieval legend was Zoroastrian tradition preserved as late as the 1200's.

Magi was the name of the Zoroastrian priestly caste, not kings, but astronomers, astrologers and alchemist/physicians. The gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh are traditional Zoroastrian temple offerings, with no precedent in the old testament. Their meaning differs from the interpretation in the Western church. Myrrh in particular does not "tell a tale of gathering gloom," as the carol has it, but was a healing unction used by Zoroastrian physicians. Interestingly, the town of Saveh was a leading center of astronomy/astrology circa 6 B.C. (and continued so until Ghenghis Kahn burned it), and thus is a plausible place for the magi to have set out from.

Fr. Jerry had a good joke on Sunday. Two Jehovah's Witnesses called on George, a life long Catholic. George wasn't really interested, but invited the two young elders in for a glass of water. He sat down with them in the living room, and the two witnesses looked at George and each other nervously, but remained silent. Finally, George asked them if anything were wrong. One of the witnesses said, "Well, it's just that we've been at this quite a while, but we've never got this far before."
posted by thomas at 1/07/2004 11:14:00 AM

 
Just a teensy bit anti-Amuricin
By Tom Smith

The only hope for the planet is the isolation and neutralization of the United States by the international community. Policies to do so are underway in every democratic country on earth in quiet, unobtrusive ways. If the United States is not checkmated and nuclear war ensues, civilization as we know it will disappear and the United States will go into the history books along with the Huns and the Nazis as a scourge of human life itself.

This little jewel comes from Chalmers Johnson, who wrote Blowback: Why America should be destroyed (I just made up the subtitle).

Thanks to Brian Leiter for the pointer. Brian helps keep me from believing that everybody loves hamburgers, guns, fast cars, extremely high-tech weaponry, and gets teary eyed at "American the Beautiful." I didn't use to be that way. But then, on my mother's side there were some of those Irish U.S. Army types in the Oregon territory not known for their enlightened attitude toward imperialism. Maybe some of those genes have been triggered by middle age and excessive alcohol consumption.
posted by thomas at 1/07/2004 10:09:00 AM

 
Critter watch
By Tom Smith

One of the peculiar things I have come to like about the odd part of east San Diego county I live in is its abundance of wildlife, some of it rather threatening. Of the venomous creatures living around and sometimes in my house, that can deliver bites or stings that range from the painful to the quite possibly fatal, there are scorpions, black widow spiders, brown recluse spiders, velvet ants (both red and 'skunk' variety), numerous wasps, including the potentially very nasty tarantula hawk, the mostly harmless but potentially painful tarantula, and at least two varieties of rattlesnake. When we first moved into a house out here some 10 years ago, I was playing ball with my then 2 year old Luke. As I bent down to pick up the ball, I saw lurking under the play cube the biggest rattlesnake I had ever seen. It was a true monster, a good five feet long and a thick as a man's elbow. Of course I killed it, chopping it into pieces with a hoe which I sharpened quickly with a file. A sharpened hoe is perfect for killing snakes. I generally don't kill creatures, but a giant rattler that could easily kill a child is a special exception. That was the first of many close encouters of the scaley kind. Snakes on the patio, snakes in the pool. For a while we kept a giant rosy boa in the tub and got some great pictures of the kids playing with it. They are harmless, pretty snakes though for some reason they don't smell very good. Most recently, while running, I stepped into the shrubbery for some quick relief, but as I was wearing headphones, I didn't hear any rattle. I looked down to see that I was standing on a juvenile rattlesnake, maybe an inch thick. But fortunately it was a California snake. It just lay there, as if to say "Dude. You're standing on me." I stepped back and we both quietly went our way.

Scorpions are creepy little creatures. One night as I lay on the floor watching "A Man Named Peter" and having the pious, sentimental thoughts that movie tends to inspire, I felt something crawling on me. I brushed at it, not looking at it, then suddenly felt a numbing, stinging sensation on my hand. I looked down to see a demonic little scorpion flourishing its stinger. The little devil! I was kind of glad to have gotten getting stung for the first time by a scorpion over with. The ones in Southern California are no big deal. But in Arizona, Mexico and through the tropics, there are many potentially deadly scorpions, especially of the so-called Centurion variety. Scorpions kill more people every year than any other venomous insect or arachnid, mostly children not wearing shoes.

I don't know anybody who likes black widows. The more you know about them, the less there is to like. The Red Hourglass is a fine little book on the spider and other creatures. Written by a small town Oklaholma journalist, it is also a great example of fine prose, of the plain American variety. The extreme potency of the widow's venom is an evolutionary puzzle. It seems many times more powerful than necessary to kill its prey. Brown recluse spiders are unlovable as well. Their bite is not usually fatal, but can produce painful ulcers that are difficult to treat and slow to heal. Their venom can also cause permanent neurological damage. A local San Diego paper recently carried a story of a high school football star sidelined by a brown recluse bite that produced, according to his coach's helpful description, 'a hole in his leg you could push your finger into, down to the bone.' Thanks for the visual, coach. The $25 a month I spend for the exterminator to spray around the house is money very well spent.

I forgot to mention "killer bees," but we have them too. They are generally no big deal, at least until they surround you in a buzzing cloud of enraged, many stingered fury. A few months ago I came home to discover that an amazingly loud, basketball sized clump of beehood had established itself under the eve of my house. One of my most thrilling memories from childhood was a game we used to play, inspired by a psychologically troubled boy who lived next door, involving sneaking up on a hornet's nest with a garden hose equipped with a pistol-style nozzle. One would spray the nest, then drop the hose and sprint away as the cloud of enraged hornets flew from their nest, which looked like something out of a horror movie. But this nest on my house looked like Africanized bees to me, noisier and more aggressive than bees usually are, or so I thought. The emergency bee people could not come until the next morning, so we followed their instructions--close windows, don't try to hose them--until they were efficiently dispatched the next morning.

More intriguing to me are the wasps. The solitary tarantula hawk is a large black wasp, about 2 inches long, with distinctive orange wings, and a menacing low buzz. Its lifestyle is charming. It stings tarantulas, which paralyzes, but does not kill them. It drags the arachnid back to its hole, then deposits an egg on its stomach. The egg hatches into a cute little wasp maggot, which proceeds to eat the still living, but paralyzed spider slowly, being careful to save the head and other vital organs till last, so its meal remains fresh. Think about that next time you think boiling a lobster is cruel. I read somewhere that Darwin lost his faith in a divine creator of Nature due to his study of wasps. The sting of the tarantula hawk is supposed to be devastatingly painful, enough to induce cardiac arrest in people with heart problems. Speaking of wasps, the so-called 'velvet ant' is in fact not an ant at all, but a wingless wasp. You may have seen these bright red, fuzzy fat ant-looking creatures. They're so cute and furry. Maybe you should pick one up? No, you should not. They pack a wallop, like the worst bee sting I hope you have ever had. I picked up one in our house in a big wad of Kleenex. It stung through the paper and into my finger, producing intense pain and a blister. I let it go outside. Then I stepped on it.

As you may sense, I could go on. Fortunately, my middle child shares my fascination and goes me one better. For his birthday he wanted, among other things, some preying mantis egg pods, which are available, of course, on the internet. The pods sat in their terraium for the longest time, until I was sure they were inert. Another internet insect ripoff. Then one morning I awoke to several hundred very small mantids crawling within and then outside their tank. They were smaller than the airvents and soon made their exit and disappeared into the general insect habitat that is our home. Voracious predators that they are, I'm sure they did fine.
posted by thomas at 1/06/2004 08:28:00 PM

 
Maybe That's Why They're in the Zoo
By Gail Heriot

The San Diego Zoo is a wonderful place. It fully deserves its reputation as among the best zoos in the world. It's impossible to see everything in one afternoon, but like most visitors, I was careful to include a stop by the ape exhibits on my recent trip there. Of special interest to me were the rare bonobos, which, for those of you who don't know your apes, are pygmy chimpanzees. The species--pan paniscus--lives exclusively in remote area of the North Central Congo and is said to be in serious danger of extinction.

Bonobos have received considerable attention from those who like to draw lessons from nature about the supposed "naturalness" or "unnaturalness" of human sexual behavior. If you've ever heard that human beings are the only species to engage in homosexuality, forget it. Bonobo males not only commmonly engage in sex with other bonobo males, they do so hanging from trees. Lesbianism is, if anything, more common. Some experts have suggested that female bonobos integrate themselves into a new community by providing sexual favors to the established females. Indeed, it is hard to come up with with a sexual practice that the promiscuous bonobos would consider taboo. Incest does not appear to carry with it any special stigma, whether acted out between siblings, father and daughter, or mother and son. Sex between adults and children is also common. And it's not just particular sexual activity that draws human attention; it's the amount of activity. Zoologists observing bonobos in captivity report that males get erections around feeding time; they know that meals are usually accompanied with a little action. It's said that the average married American believes that the average married American is getting laid more often than he (or she) is. Bonobos really are.

If you are tempted to draw any conclusions about the blissfully (or not-so-blissfully) uninhibited sex lives of our hunter-gatherer ancestors from the bonobo example, resist. Simian sexual practices vary significantly from species to species, and it's hard to come up with good reasons to suppose that early humans were more like bonobos than like other apes. Gabons are monogamous; gorillas are polygamous. More ordinary chimpanzees (pan troglodytes) are less promiscuous than the randy bonobos, but you still wouldn't want your sister to associate with them. And the orangutan is perhaps the most foreign to the human way of doing things: They lead solitary lives occasionally punctuated with brief sexual encounters with members of the opposite sex--not a life that many of us aspire to.

More important, if you are inclined to draw normative conclusions for humans from the bonobo example, again resist. The bonobos' uninhibited sex lives do not seem to have resulted in any great gains for the bonobo species. After millions of years of evolution, bonobos are clinging to a few acres of land in the Congo. Human beings, on the other hand, with all their sexual inhibitions and taboos, now number six billion. They have built great cathedrals, cured diseases in both man and animal, and landed Martian probes. I can't prove the traditional sexual mores have anything to do with this; then again I can't prove they don't have any connection either. Until that proof comes along, I am somewhat inclined to stick to my taboos and inhibitions. I would add that bonobos also have to endure the indignity of humans gawking at their sexual practices at the San Diego Zoo. But they didn't seem to mind that. Really.


posted by Gail at 1/06/2004 06:29:00 PM

 
Feeling Grouchy?
By YTom Smith

You need to read about the Tangayika laughter epidemic of 1962.
posted by thomas at 1/06/2004 03:19:00 PM

 
Yes, David, Jesus does have it in for you
By Tom Smith

David Bernstein, probably inadvertently, has walked into one of the great theological debates started by St. Augustine. David rightly complains that winners often attribute their success to God or Jesus, but losers rarely blame God for their failure. This is almost exactly what the debate over "double predestination" was about. St. Augustine (I am told in my Teaching Company course on same) believed God chose eternally to save certain individuals. They were predestined to be saved. But what about those who were not so predestined? Did God choose to predestine them to damnation? It would seem so, because by choosing only 1 through n, everybody greater than n has been chosen for damnation. It doesn't make sense for God to say, "I'm not choosing you to be damned, I'm just not choosing to save you!" Apparently, theologians before Calvin were unwilling to bite this bullet, but Calvin said, "that's right--Some unfortunates are predestined to be damned from eternity!" This causes much consternation among Christian thinkers, because it allows the possibility that say, Bill Clinton would receive a bolus of grace on his death bed and spend the rest of eternity singing praise in his Arkansas accent. I know, an ugly thought, when he belongs in that big open pit barbecue referred to in the Good Book. Or so it would seem to me. But then judge not, etc.
posted by thomas at 1/06/2004 12:58:00 PM

 
Cool gear, part 1
By Tom Smith

As a public service, I intend to alert readers of cool gear whenever I feel like it. Here is a little gadget for about half what I paid for a similar thing. It is a heart rate monitor, GPS and altimeter rolled into one, so you can run out your door in the morning and keep track of how many miles you cover, feet you climb, and how your pump handled it. I bought one from Timex and have yet succeeded in getting it to work. This one however, is made by a leading manufacturer of GPS devices, so maybe it will work better.
posted by thomas at 1/06/2004 12:45:00 PM

 
Google IPO?
By Tom Smith

Update on rumored Google IPO.
posted by thomas at 1/06/2004 08:47:00 AM

 
New Ford GT
By Tom Smith

Ford's coming out with a new exotic, called the GT. Looks like an update of the old GT. It'll run you about 150 large. Get one of these and you can skip the blue pill.
posted by thomas at 1/05/2004 04:36:00 PM

 
We're just a happy bunch
By Tom Smith

I would put myself inbetween 'very happy' and 'fairly happy'. Maybe just 'happy.' Mr. Gallup tells us married is more happy than otherwise, Republicans happier than Democrats (and not just since Bush ascended). Interesting stuff. Danka to opinionjournal.com for the pointer.
posted by thomas at 1/05/2004 03:08:00 PM

 
One more reason to be married
By Tom Smith

This story in the New York Times style section a few weeks back has created a buzz. Unfortunately, it's in their lame pay only archive. He's a taste from Nexis, just a fair use of course:

IN AN OVERSEXED AGE, MORE GUYS TAKE A PILL

CHRIS LONDON remembers the first time an impotence drug came to his emotional
rescue. A 41-year-old lawyer and executive recruiter in Manhattan, Mr. London
had been on a few dates with a lawyer who told him she couldn't judge a man
without first having sex with him. The two made plans to meet after work, and
Mr. London said he felt pretty certain about what was going to happen. He also
felt not a little anxious.

"She was very wired -- a Samantha on 'Sex and the City'-type thing," he said.
"She made it like it was this test -- like passing the bar. I'm thinking to
myself, I haven't had this sort of performance anxiety since I was 17."

Thanks to a doctor friend, Mr. London happened to have a tablet of Viagra
on hand, and he darted into the bathroom and gulped the blue pill. It worked
as billed, and later that evening, Mr. London said, he overheard his date giving
his performance a rave in a phone call to a friend.

"In this city there's a lot of pressure to look good, to make money and to
perform well," Mr. London said. "It's just one more added thing to give you more
masculine, virile attributes and to have that insurance."

Mr. London is not one of the 15 million to 30 million American men who, by
estimates of the National Institutes of Health, suffer from impotence, or what
drug makers call erectile dysfunction -- the repeated inability to maintain an
erection suitable for intercourse. Nor is he simply a thrill-seeking
recreational user, curious about impotence drugs' supposedly wondrous physical
effects.

Rather, he is one of an increasing number of sexually healthy men, many in
their 20's, 30's and 40's, who doctors and sex therapists say are using
impotence drugs -- Viagra, Levitra and the new Cialis, a k a "the weekender"
because it stays in the bloodstream for 36 hours -- as psychological palliatives
against the mighty expectations of modern romance.



Isn't that just sweet?

It does remind me of a true story a local doctor told me. This guy comes in and complains, after some hemming and hawing, that he just hasn't felt like having sex lately. The doc asks how long it has been. The patient says, 10 days. Anything happen ten days ago? Yes, the patient, a 75 year old male, had undergone major abdominal surgery. How often did he usually have sex? The patient looked at the doctor as if she were stupid, and said, "every day, of course!" With your wife? "Yes, of course!" How long have you been married? "55 years." You've had sex with your wife every day for the last 55 years? "Except for the last ten days." The doctor explained a ten day hiatus in sex after major surgery was not unusual, but he should come back if he didn't feel better in another couple of weeks. He never came back. They make 'em strong out in East County.

posted by thomas at 1/05/2004 02:27:00 PM

 
They don't call it the heart of darkness for nothing
By Tom Smith

From the Times's Sunday book review, this charming little account of civil war in Africa. There's a half-hearted attempt at moral relativism about half-way through, but that's hard to pull of when you're talking about making kids cut off their parents' hands.
posted by thomas at 1/05/2004 02:10:00 PM

 
Cool card trick
By Tom Smith

I was still at the that's amazing! phase when my 10 year old, Patrick, figured out how it works. Yes, if you fall for it, you will feel stupid when you figure it out.
posted by thomas at 1/03/2004 01:57:00 PM

 
Does this remind you of yourself?
By Tom Smith

Your mother told you to clean up your room. See what can happen if you don't. (via Jacob Levy at volokh).
posted by thomas at 1/02/2004 02:29:00 PM

 
Self Defence
By Tom Smith

This is interesting, on the (lack of a) right to self defense in the UK (via instapundit). Brits, stalwart souls that they are, apparently want Parliament to recognize their natural right to defend their homes against invaders, but for reasons I just don't get, Labor and even a lot of Conservative MPs, won't touch the issue. Even with their stupid laws, you are probably still much safer in London than you are in Washington, but nevertheless, burglary is growing fast in the UK, and why wouldn't it, if you can be assured all the homeowner can do is beg you please not to take the silver or call the bobbies, who probably won't get there soon enough to do any good.

My perspective on guns is shaped by my boyhood. I rarely went hunting, since my dad had given it up after World War II. He said he saw enough killing on Okinawa to last him a lifetime, and I don't doubt it -- more people died in the Battle of Okinawa than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. However, we did have several shotguns and a .22 rifle in the house, which my dad eventually showed us how to use. My father is a retired state court trial judge, and over the years he sent many miscreants to the state pen. Of course, we kids were often fascinated by the criminal cases, which included the usual share of murders, rapes and other mayhem. There was always the chance some bad guy would escape and come to visit the judge who sent him up. On one occasion, I remember sitting up part of the night with my dad, after he had received a call from the sheriff that some killer had broken out and it might do to lock the doors and windows. I was glad my father was armed and knew how to shoot that night. The guns were not locked up, just tucked away in my father's closet. The only thing that protected them was a rule that we were not to touch them, and we didn't.

Another thing that has made an impression on me is the history of my wife's family. Her brother was murdered in a home invasion robbery, a quite notorious case, that could have been prevented, probably, had their household been armed. Her brother was a graduate student in Chicago, and the intruders were armed with knives. Perhaps if my brother in law had had a pistol, it would have made no difference, or perhaps both Mark and his wife would have been killed, instead of just Mark. But perhaps they would have repelled the robbers, and the enormous devastation that always ripples outward from these sorts of horrible crimes, would have been avoided. Until you see the effect a murder has on the survivors, you just can't appreciate what a terrible thing it is. When you defend yourself or your loved ones, you're defending a whole circle of people, everybody who loves you and would grieve at your loss. Those clueless Brits who oppose self-defense speak as if it is somehow selfish. Yet every parent knows the main reason you would not want to be killed is because of the effect it would have your kids, and on your own parents. Our baby boy, born 11 weeks ago, is named Mark.

Nor does it make sense to say defending yourself is one thing, and defending your property is another. If someone forcibly breaks into your home, you are at risk of injury and death. Just the psychological damage from having to submit to the humiliation of home invasion, if you're lucky enough to avoid a head injury or a rape, is profound.

One of my new year's resolutions is to install a gun safe in a wall, so my pistol is more readily accessible. I'm also going to equip it with both a 12 gauge and either a 20 or 4-10 gauge shotguns, a his and hers sort of thing. And then I think some sort of all purpose rifle, maybe a lever action carbine. Yes, I like guns. No reason not to have some fun.
posted by thomas at 1/02/2004 09:00:00 AM